Table of Contents
Gender equality means that equality of men and women in all matters of life that is socio economic and political. The concept of inclusive growth rate generally means that everyone is included in the growth process. Kerala has achieved social and economic development, but we are still facing wide gender disparities in many areas. This paper highlights on the gender indicators like literary level, health status and their role in labour market, political participation and decision making. Wide gender gap can be seen in the indicators like work participation, employment and political participation.
The Government should give special attention and care to reduce such type of disparities. This paper seek to draw the attention to which gender factors are more promoting inclusive growth rate when both men and women are enjoying equal status. Our analysis is also conducted in the areas in which gender equalities are to be achieved. Keywords: gender equality, inclusive growth, literacy, health, work participation, political participation Gender equality means that women and men have the same rights, responsibilities and opportunities in all areas of life. Inclusive growth means that fasting of county’s growth and development by the contribution of both men and women in the society. If we excluded women from the development activities we cannot achieve faster and inclusive growth.
Gender relations play an important role in understanding inequalities between men and women in the society. It helps to determine the position of people in the society. According to World Bank Report (2012) there are two ways to measure the gender relations:
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- explicit measures and
- implicit measures.
The explicit measures examine the difference in the ratio of socio economic factors like health, literacy, nutrition, wage difference, property and ownership handed by both men and women in the society. Implicit measures are used to examine difference in power and culture. These inequalities lead to unequal distribution of power, resources, decision making and work.
Government should identify these inequalities and take necessary steps to reduce such type of inequalities. Capabilities domain, access to resources and opportunity domain and security domain are the three domains of gender equality. The capability domain refers to capabilities of human being which are measured in terms of health, education that is better to access the opportunities available to them. The accesses to resource and opportunity domain help to find out the capabilities through access to economic assets.
The security domain helps to reduce the vulnerability to violence and conflict among individuals, communities (UN Millennium Project2005).These three domains of gender equality are interrelated to each other. If we want to achieve gender equality we need to improve all the three domains. Review of literature Gopala Krishna Kumar (1989) attempted to understand the importance of gender based discussion on poverty and wellbeing analysis and concludes that issue of gender discrimination and welfare can only be solved if the traditional framework of development analysis is changed. Lekshmi Devi K.R (2002) discussed the impact of education on the change in the status of women in Kerala.
She says that through the influence of education women have entered modern sectors for acquiring employment. The educational status of father, mother and husband has greatly influence the employment status of women in Kerala. Sumit Mazumdar and M.Guruswamy (2006) tried to examine the trend and pattern of female work participation rates in Kerala and to find out the factors affecting the work participation of women in Kerala.
Objectives of the Study and Data Source
- To examine the gender gaps in the basic socio economic indicators.
- To examine whether there exist district wise gaps in gender dimensions.
- To identify the areas in which gender equality is to be achieved.
The study is based on secondary data from Census, NSS reports of Government of India, Economic Review, Government of Kerala, and journal articles. Major indicators for evaluating gender equality used in the study are the following. a) Literacy and education b) Health status c) Labour market participation d) Political participation and decision making. Kerala model of development reveals the achievement of Kerala in the socio economic and demographic spheres. The state has remained the only in the whole country to have a consistent positive sex ratio with proportion of 1084 females for 1000 males reported in the 2011 census.
In many ways Kerala model of development cannot directly introduce the role of women as equal status for promoting development of the state. Kerala ranks first in terms of human development indicators compared to other states. The impressive record of the state with regard to human development indicators impacted on the status of women as well. The higher ranks of political and economic power in Kerala are still dominated by men. The inequalities in these areas adversely affect inclusive growth rate.
Literacy and Education
Literacy and education are important indicators of gender development. Literacy is the basic requirement for every civilized person. Kerala was become the first Indian State to achieve 100 percentage primary education. Literacy and education of Kerala can be represented in table
According to 2001 census Kerala has the highest literacy rate of 90.86 percentages occupies the top spot in both males and female literacy, at 94.24 percentage and 87.72 percentage respectively. This data shows that female representation is less than male representation. In the 2011 census the position of literacy rate among males and females increased at 96.02 percentages to 92.07 percentages respectively. The difference in male female literacy rates of all the census year shows that there is still gender inequality exist in Kerala. In 1951 census, gender gap literacy in Kerala was 21.92 percent and it fell to 3.95 percent in 2011 census.
Enrolment of student Table 2 shows the enrolment of girls and boys at different levels of education in Kerala. Out of total students 48.98 percent Girls and 51.02 percent boys enrolled in school education. In case of higher secondary education the enrolment of girls (51.84) are more than boy’s enrolment. There is a wide gender disparity in the enrolment of graduation and post graduation courses. Girls constitutes 68.6 percent and boys constitutes only 31.4 percent in graduation courses and 69.24 percent girls and only 30.76 percent Boys enrolled in post-graduation courses in various Arts and Science Colleges of Kerala during 2016-17 . Boys outnumbered girls in terms of technical courses.
Health indicators
Another important indicator for promoting gender parity is health. As the status of men and women is intimately connected with this sound factor, better condition of health for both men and women enable to achieve gender equity. An analysis of health indicators of the state is given below. The table 3 shows the major health indicators of Kerala. Most of the health indicators of women in Kerala are much better than their counterparts. Death rate of male in Kerala is 7.6 percent and female death rate is 5.7 percent only. It shows that gender gap exist in Kerala in terms of mortality Similarly in the case of life expectancy gender gap exist in Kerala. The life expectancy of birth at male and female in Kerala is 71.4 and 76.9 respectively.
In Kerala, the percentage of whose body mass index below normal is high (9.7 percent) compared to their male (8.5 percent) counterparts. In the year 2005-06, it was 18.0 percent for females and 21.5 percent for males. In case of obesity, the percentage of women in Kerala is higher than that of their male counterparts in the state. In case of percentage of anemic, the female percentage (34.2) is higher than male percentage. It also seen that percentage has increased from 2005-06 to 2015-16.
Gender participation in the economy is the most important indicator to examine the gender equality exists or not. Gender gaps are the one of the most pressing challenges facing the world today. Work Participation Rate: The women of Kerala are in the forefront of health and social spheres but their work participation rate in the labour market is very low. Social spheres, the female work participation rate has been on the decline and even much steeper than male work participation. A low female work participation rates indicates the existence of a large proportion of unemployed women in the labour force The work
